Harris Elias and his 15-year-old son were driving home from dinner at a local Fort Collins, Colorado, taco spot when they got pulled over.
Elias, a 51-year-old single father of three, told The Daily Beast that he immediately “put his defenses up” as he noticed Officer Jason Haferman walking up to his driver-side window on Dec. 3, 2021.
“At first, he asked me if I knew why he had pulled me over, which I thought was a ridiculous question because I had no idea why he would pull me over,” Elias said. “As soon as he asked me what I had to drink, I knew it was happening all over again.”
The harrowing sense of deja-vu, he said, was spurred because just two years prior, he had been arrested by a Loveland, Colorado, police officer on suspicion of driving under the influence (DUI). The case was eventually dismissed, but it instilled a deep fear of overzealous law enforcement in Elias.
In a police report obtained by The Daily Beast, Haferman claimed Elias’ “eyes were glassy, pupils constricted, and his breathing was deep” and immediately placed him under arrest to get tested for drugs and alcohol at a local hospital. A Colorado Bureau of Investigation Forensic Services lab report later detected no drugs or alcohol in his system.
But before those results came back, Elias was already halfway to hell.
“I can’t explain what it is like walking through the hospital handcuffed. To see how people look at you, and how the staff interacts with you,” Elias said. “It was really degrading.”
The humiliation, he said, was just the start. When he was allowed to bond out of jail three days later, he said, he had to deal with child protective services and beg a judge to let him have contact with his son.
That’s because in Colorado, state law dictates that an individual who commits a DUI that involves a child can also be prosecuted for child abuse, a charge Elias faced in addition to driving under the influence and careless driving. Elias eventually got all charges dropped after approximately two months—but, he said, the sting hasn’t gone away.
Harris Elias
Photo Illustration by Luis G. Rendon/The Daily Beast/Getty/Fort Collins Police Department
“Knowing that I couldn’t even drive with my own kid and there was zero evidence that I violated any law… it made me feel six inches tall,” Elias explained. “By far, the thing that doesn’t go away from this case is the child abuse aspect of it. It is the ultimate way to hurt someone who has spent the last 15 years as a single dad.”
Elias is not the only Colorado resident to be wrongfully accused of driving under the influence after being stopped by Haferman. In fact, the Fort Collins Police Department confirmed to The Daily Beast that in the last two years, at least nine of Haferman’s DUI arrests were executed on drivers with no drugs or alcohol in their systems.
The shocking series of questionable arrests was first reported by Fox31.
“It’s overwhelming. He got off scot-free.”
— Harris Elias
Not included among those nine is the case of Harley Padilla—even though the severely disabled man was forced to spend a year in jail when Haferman arrested him after he said Padilla was slurring his words and that his balance was uneven. After a motorcycle accident four years prior, the 52-year-old lost his left arm and is forced to speak through a hole in his throat.
“Because of his injuries, I don’t think Harley Padilla even has the capacity to slur words,” his attorney, Troy Krenning, told The Daily Beast. “He speaks through his throat and doesn’t use his tongue or lips. Haferman also talked about his balance being uneven. No shit, he is disabled.”
At the end of his bench trial over the Feb. 18, 2021, arrest, Larimer County Judge Sarah Beth Cure found not only that Padilla was not guilty of driving under the influence, but also that Officer Haferman lacked “credibility” and offered “inconsistent” testimony.
“It changed course on several of the key facts. Some of his testimony is not supported by the evidence,” Cure concluded in her ruling, according to a transcript obtained by The Daily Beast. “In fact, some of it was contrary to the evidence.”
But before Fort Collins Police Chief Jeff Swoboda could fire Haferman after an internal police investigation, the 31-year-old resigned from the force, as the chief announced early this month. A police spokesperson confirmed the resignation came after Haferman had been reassigned twice and ultimately placed on leave after a review initially began at the start of the year—before internal affairs began their own investigation in April.
“The internal affairs investigation did not identify any malintent or criminal violations,” the spokesperson said. “It did reveal a pattern of poor performance in terms of administrative responsibilities, procedural consistency, and adherence to the standards of operation that we train and expect from our officers.”
Three residents subjected to Haferman’s arrest spree told The Daily Beast they were horrified by the idea the now-former cop has seemingly gotten off “scot-free” while they are left with what they describe as physical, mental, and emotional scars from encounters with him.
Carl Sever (left) and Cody Erbacher (right)
Photo Illustration by Luis G. Rendon/The Daily Beast/Getty/Fort Collins Police Department
All describe Haferman stopping them under the pretense that they committed a minor traffic infraction. Then—after claiming they exhibited signs of drunk driving such as smelling like alcohol or having glassy eyes or dilated pupils—they say Haferman forced them into squad cars and took them to hospitals, handcuffed, to get a blood test. The people who spoke with The Daily Beast all produced state blood test results showing that no alcohol was found in their system.
All say they were forced to spend time and money to clear their name and eventually have the charges dropped. “It was horrible,” Padilla told The Daily Beast.
Another woman told a local news outlet that she was forced to stay in jail overnight even though she repeatedly explained to Haferman that her eyes were red because she had just been dumped by her boyfriend and had been crying for three hours.
Haferman did not respond to a request for comment for this story. And his record is not unblemished: if he were to apply to a new department, the state’s “Peace Officer Standards and Training” database would show the cop “resigned while under investigation.”
But the cop’s resignation, according to criminal defense lawyers and the police department, means that technically, Haferman can move to another state (or even another Colorado county) and apply for another law enforcement position. A spokesperson for the Fort Collins Police Department told The Daily Beast that even though Haferman was facing termination, the state agency “does not prohibit employment if an officer resigns from an agency, and termination is not automatic grounds for decertification in Colorado.”
That raises the prospect the cop could land in a new gig—infuriating those caught up in what they described as a senseless dragnet that upended their lives.
“I can never look at a police officer the same way again,” Elias said.
Haferman was not exactly shy about accusing people of drunk driving. It was, after all, his job.
Of the 504 driving-under-the-influence arrests his department made last year, a police spokesperson confirmed that Haferman was involved in 191—or about 37 percent— “either as the primary arresting officer or providing DUI investigative support.”
That number is not, in and of itself, terribly surprising given that Haferman worked in a DUI enforcement assignment at the time.
But police say that eight of those cases in 2021 alone resulted in arrests where blood tests indicated no drugs or alcohol detected. Police also admit that Haferman was involved in at least one more arrest where no drugs or alcohol were detected this year.
“I was sent to jail. And then I stayed there because I refused to admit I was drunk driving when I wasn’t.”
— Harley Padilla
“People still joke to this day, ‘Don’t Drink and Drive, but even if you’re not drinking, you could still get a DUI’” in Larimer County, Matthew Haltzman, an attorney representing a man who Haferman arrested in April on a DUI charge that was dismissed, told The Daily Beast. “It was that bad.”
Among his targets was Padilla, who was driving home after spending the day visiting a friend in Fort Collins when he noticed the flashing behind him.
“I saw the lights and immediately thought it was a plower because of all the snow on the ground,” Padilla told The Daily Beast. “Then I realized it was a cop car.”
Padilla was no stranger to being pulled over. He was also not innocent of driving-related crimes, having pleaded guilty or no contest to several DUIs over the years. But he told The Daily Beast that history—and his physical state—had left him trying harder than ever “to do everything right on the road.”
So he was shocked when Haferman told him he had been swerving while driving and accused him of driving under the influence. Haferman immediately placed Padilla in handcuffs and sent him to the hospital for a blood test, which came back clean for alcohol, according to a transcript of a judge’s ruling.
During the transport via ambulance—at his own request, given he had an infection in his femur—Padilla said his wrist was hurt and his shoulder knocked out of its socket.
“At the hospital, they suggested I stay for a few days because of everything wrong with me,” Padilla said. “But instead I was sent to jail. And then I stayed there because I refused to admit I was drunk driving when I wasn’t.”
At the end of his bench trial, a judge agreed with him that he wasn’t drunk driving. But Padilla was found guilty of possessing an open marijuana container in his car and acknowledged that he had THC in his system—though the blood test result showed it was below the state limit for driving, and he said it was purchased with his medical marijuana card.
For his part, Elias saw every charge against him dismissed. But getting there was a struggle.
Haferman stated in a police report that he stopped Elias after the driver did not have his “headlamps activated at night… failed to yield the right of way to the pedestrians and made a wide turn to get around the pedestrians.” The officer also said that he turned into the wrong lane without using his right turn signal.
Haferman also noted that Elias refused to participate in roadside tests to determine his sobriety; Elias told The Daily Beast he refused to do so because he “shut down” and didn’t want anything he said to be misinterpreted later.
“It took me longer to find my car insurance and registration than it did for him to conduct his drunk driving investigation and arrest me,” Elias said.
Body-cam footage of the arrest obtained by The Daily Beast shows Elias remaining calm but refusing to answer Haferman’s questions as he searched for his license and insurance. Eventually getting out of the car, Elias says in the footage that he refuses to participate in his sobriety trials and asks for him to “write him a ticket and let him go.”
Haferman refused and continued to ask him whether he consumed alcohol—in response to which Elias insisted on speaking to his attorney. In the footage, Elias is heard telling Haferman that the handcuffs were hurting him.
“It was a violent arrest,” Elias said. “He quickly came behind me and grabbed my left wrist and put it in a painful wrist lock. It immediately sent me into a panic.”
As Haferman was closing the squad door behind him, Elias said, the cop “slammed the door on my knee”—a move that prompted him to scream out “fuck, Jesus Christ!” in the body-cam footage. In the arrest report, Haferman wrote that he felt “some restriction when the door was almost closed.”
After he was eventually released from jail, Elias said, he faced random drug tests that forced him to pee in front of a stranger—and a mirror—and lost money paying an independent lab and a lawyer to clear his name.
While it’s been months since the district attorney dismissed charges against Elias, he stressed that the “problem didn’t necessarily go away.” In addition to what he claims is emotional distress from the arrest, he said he has lost his former sense of safety and security in his community that has him “constantly looking over my shoulder.”
“It’s hard to even think about it again,” he added. And the knowledge that Haferman was able to resign “feels like less than a slap on the wrist.”
“It’s overwhelming,” he said. “He got off scot-free.”
The Fort Collins Police Department’s internal affairs department officially began to look into allegations of wrongdoing by Haferman in April. By then, Carly Zimmerman had already been arrested after being stopped for allegedly driving recklessly past Haferman as he was executing another traffic stop.
In body-camera footage obtained by KDVR, Haferman asks Zimmerman how much she has had to drink—to which she replies that she had not had any, but has “been crying for about three hours” because she had just gone through a breakup. Zimmerman’s charge was eventually dismissed and her driver’s license was reinstated after a hearing, according to the outlet. (Zimmerman and her lawyer did not respond to a request for comment.)
Around the same time, Derrick Groves was arrested, too. According to an April 7 arrest report obtained by The Daily Beast, Haferman stopped Groves after the man allegedly lost control of his car and drove down an embankment.
Noting that Groves was on probation for a prior DUI offense, Haferman said he quickly concluded that he had “bloodshot, glassy eyes, his pupils appeared to be different sizes, and he [his] speech was slow and raspy at times,” the report states. Groves insisted that he “does not use alcohol and drugs because he was on probation…[and] stated that he was 100% sober.”
Groves was eventually arrested and forced to go to the hospital to get a blood test before eventually getting placed in a jail cell for a day. The district attorney eventually dismissed his DUI in June—and his careless driving charge two months later.
A Colorado Bureau of Investigation Forensic Services lab report said no drugs or alcohol were detected.
“I can’t diagnose PTSD, but he certainly has all the symptoms of being someone who is traumatized,” Matthew Haltzman, his lawyer, told The Daily Beast.
The Larimer County District Attorney’s Office told The Daily Beast they were first made aware of the suspicious cases this summer. That’s when the District Attorney’s office was informed by Fort Collins Police that they had already started conducting an internal review.
Matt Maillaro, an assistant district attorney, told The Daily Beast that by August—after going through case files and finding “more problematic cases”—his office contacted the police department with the news.
They would “no longer be prosecuting cases in which former officer Haferman was an essential witness,” the prosecutor said.
Maillaro added that the DA’s office concluded that several of Haferman’s arrests were “made based on poor judgment, disregard for the proper procedures and training, and a misunderstanding or disregard of the legal requirements regarding probable cause.”
But they did not find anything to support criminal charges against him.
“Through our review, it was apparent this had already been done on most of the cases by virtue of each prosecutor dismissing Haferman’s bad cases when they saw the evidence didn’t support a prosecution,” Maillaro added.
It remains to be seen if Haferman can walk away completely unscathed.
Elias’ lawyer, Sarah Schielke, told The Daily Beast that she plans to file a lawsuit against the Fort Collins Police Department and Haferman on behalf of Elias and several other clients who were also falsely arrested on DUI charges. Matthew Haltzman said he plans to file a similar lawsuit next year.
“I think that Jason Haferman had an innate desire to be the best DUI cop out here or on his force, no matter the cost. No matter who was left in his wake,” Haltzman said. “But while he was just seeing prey, he was not realizing he was leaving people’s lives forever changed.”
“But that’s over now. His reign of terror is over and it’s time to get justice.”
